Development of Chinese Teachers’ Culture Teaching Scale: Exploring Potentials of Culture Teaching

The teaching of culture is important to enhance students’ cultural competence and foster global awareness, preparing them for an increasingly globalized world. Teachers, especially language teachers, play a special role in teaching culture in the classroom, whether implicitly or explicitly. Most studies on teaching culture in the language classroom have been conducted within the context of English language teaching; however, there seems to be a dearth of studies in other language learning contexts. The present study aims to investigate the perceptions and practices in the teaching of culture among Hong Kong Chinese language teachers in primary schools and kindergartens. The Chinese Teachers’ Culture Teaching Scale (CTCT) was designed with two constructs: Chinese culture teaching perceptions (19 items) and Chinese culture teaching practices (16 items). Validation of the questionnaire was performed through Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). The final version resulted in a 33-item questionnaire with four factors in Chinese culture teaching perceptions and practices respectively. The development and validation of the CTCT Scale provides a means to assess Chinese teachers’ perceptions and practices in teaching culture, identify areas of improvement and contribute to teacher training programmes.